He stood close in front of her. “You were out there in the field,” he said rapidly. “I was there, too. I know why I’ve been there every night. Not for Elijah’s sake; he just happened to come over; he went calling around the yard for me, and I heard him … Not because of him. I’ve been there, hoping that you might—” His fingers curled around her hand.

“Don’t kiss me,” she heard a far-away voice, lone woman’s voice, trying desperately to take refuge in counterfeit dignity. “Don’t kiss me—Mr. Bale. I shall go mad if you do.”

His lips burned hers. She had the feeling that some mysterious starchiness had gone out of the fabric of her, in that long moment. I’m married, she wanted to tell him, I’m married to Tyler Fanning. Almighty God, I’m married … Mrs. Captain Fanning. The thunder burst against her ears … She began to forget everything, she did not want to remember wistaria or the thorny field or anything else.

I suppose, she tried to say to herself, this is something I’ve been waiting for, all my life. If only it weren’t for that light—and the window. I know he saw something or someone outside. If that awful, gasping kerosene lamp … the lamp went out, blown out, left them together, locked against one another. He lifted her, her feet lost the floor; rain slapped against little windows. Oh, she cried inside herself, how wicked I am, how completely fallen from some stupid estate. Don’t take your arms away. Closer, harder, never take them away, wind yourself around me, in and out of me. I felt this lunacy an hour ago, but I never thought it would come again.

Chapter 3

3.

Monday evening, Elijah Huddlestone went to bed on a hard sofa in Doctor Duffey’s parlor. The old doctor had ceased wearing bandages on his hands two days before, but the new skin was still thin and sensitive. It was difficult for him to hold old Salt’s reins, or harness him, or manage a dozen other necessary chores. The procreative impulse of Adams county was not willing to let him take even an essential vacation; Mrs. Carl Bearman gave birth to a fat, pink daughter about supper time. Elijah Huddlestone was important to the Bearmans and to the doctor, in those hours.

He drove back to Gettysburg at ten o’clock, with Duffey a dozing cargo in the rear seat. The doctor awoke only when they rocked across the railroad crossing. He yawned. “Seems as if we had been to Carlisle and back, Elijah my boy. And there’s Emmy Funk’s tumor, and old Kaufman ready to stop breathing at any moment. Indeed, he may be gone now.”